ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

my wife and kids are currently at my in-laws' house in OH where the kids have:

- received new All-Stars
- learned how to say "crab cake"

we already have to watch everything J does as he can crawl like lightning. We have one room we set up as pretty 'safe' for him to be in if I need to go downstairs (plus we have a playpen next to the kitchen which I could not live without). Anyway he was in the safe room (oh yeah, we now have nowhere to hang laundry on racks) and I thought I'd closed the door well enough to keep him contained but lo and behold about 10 seconds later I checked on him and he'd escaped to the bathroom and had his hands in the toilet OF COURSE

- received new All-Stars

YESSSSSS

- learned how to say "crab cake"

YYYYYESSSSSSSSSS

I have more or less mastered the classic dad move of napping through kids' movies.
I am also bizarrely proud of this milestone!

Crucial skill imo

Dont ask me what happens in those harry potter movies all i remember is ian brown cameo

ohio crab cakes?

To hear my mother tell it, she once took her eyes off my then-a-toddler little sister for five minutes and the next thing she knew the kid had scaled the antique upright grand piano using the music rack and wooden carvings as footholds, pushed all the piles of sheet music onto the floor 5 feet below, and was wailing because now she's bored and wants down.

I of course never did anything of the sort.

Ok, you guys know the one about stepping on a lego (or any other toy really) in the dark? This morning I was blithely bounding down the steps, ready to greet the new day, when I came down hard on the edge of a rolled up slap bracelet.

http://www.partypalooza.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/HalloweenSlapBracelet.jpg

You guys remember slap bracelets? Flexible stainless steel covered by a thin plastic sheath. Last seen in the wild circa 1989, getting confiscated in class by my fifth grade teacher. Well, those are back apparently. It was like stomping on a cookie cutter.

yow

:(

shit ow ow ow ow

Yeah, I took off my socks for the first time since I left for work and still have a circular bruise. It broke the skin slightly in just one little spot. When it happened, I had to double-check to make sure it hadn't sliced right into my foot.

took the wee one for a first visit to nursery today (one hour with me). He hated it and I feel awful... he's a shy type and it's so noisy and chaotic...

How's life: ouch! That sucks.

kinder: don't feel guilty yet. The first trip is going to be traumatic but it will get easier on him.

So we have friends who are from abroad and have no family and not many friends here and we offered to watch their son (3) when the mom goes into labor with baby #2. It just happened, and he's gonna stay in our apt tonight after he gets out of daycare. I keep thinking that it's weird that I'm gonna have to wipe the butt of some kid I don't know very well, although I guess that's what preschool teachers do all day.

Do you know how to speak his language??

update: may not happen after all, the dad may just come to stay with him for the night. FWIW he speaks some English bc he's in an English preschool, but my wife also speaks his language.

designated butt wiper

Everyone in our house has just had the flu, but it doesn't slow Ella down in the slightest.

can i just say, i LITERALLY have no idea how any of you who are single parents do this. especially if you have more than one kid.

Um, some dad at K's preschool today started talking about how it was important for a girl not to be the oldest in the class, but ok for a boy. Has anyone ever heard this before? I have no idea what he was talking about, and he probably didn't feel like explaining after I was like "Um, my daughter is the oldest."

She's actually not literally the oldest, but she's like #2 or #3. And she's also tall for her age -- is this some kind of a height/different development speed thing? I was the youngest in my class and hated it, but it never occurred to me that there would be some gender aspect to this.

that is bizarre

Is it some kind of dating thing? I mean she can date someone a little younger imo (I'm 6 mos younger than my wife) and she can also date someone a grade up, like plenty of people do, so I am really perplexed, yet obviously anytime a parent drops shit like that on you you start to worry about it.

preschool does seem to be about the right time to sort out dating rules

my thoughts exactly

I'm just confused. Never heard anything like that.

lol djp

fwiw I don't know this dad well but always got a douchey vibe from him, including having noticed him ogling/hitting on moms at the school.

btw D figured out how to climb out of the portable play yard today

RIP D, it is only a matter of time before you find a way to kill yourself at your grandparents' half-childproofed house

Just be proud of his talents, and never take your eyes off him ever.

also wrap him in bubble-wrap

I will pass that all on to my wife, who is there with them while I'm back home working

Judah is in a strange phase lately. We were having tons of trouble getting him to go to bed/stay in his room/go to sleep, but then we got rid of all his pacifiers and now he goes right to sleep. wtf.

on the downside, he has also recently "discovered how strong he is" (as his pre-K teacher says) and now he's realized that it's actually kind of really hard for one of us to physically restrain him if we need to do - so now he's throwing shit, hitting people, scratching etc. I mean not all the time, but when he's upset or doesn't want to do something this is a thing he's now discovered he can do. fun times...

nb: I am not always great at following my own advice to never take my eyes off them, in spite of having a rowdy 3.5 yr old and a fragile 5 mo old.

I'm much better at it than my wife is, which is part of what is currently worrying me

shakey: start lifting bro

start with the kid

eh I'm just getting one of these, tell him to "punch the clown" whenever he feels like hitting something
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fkidtimes.files.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fbozo-and-boppers.jpg%3Fw%3D460&f=1

bouncer is part of your job description, they don't tell you that at the hospital

it is kind of alarming how strong a 2 1/2 ft tall 3yo can be

oh yes. I remember a morning when I literally could not get her into her stroller to go to school and just kind of gave up until she calmed down.

right? Not long ago if I needed him to do something/go somewhere and he refused well I could just pick him up. nowadays if he doesn't want to go up the stairs and insists on lying on the landing instead I just wait til he gets bored.

you also have to develop special holds/carries to avoid getting kicked

That's the thing, he might only weigh like 40lbs, but it's 40lbs with momentum in all directions at the same time. I sometimes think they should develop a dynamic workout based on a device that moves like a tantrumming toddler.

Not re tantrums, but I know that in one study they got athletes to lie down next to pre-walking babies, and copy all their arm/leg movements, and the athletes got exhausted waaay before the muscle-building babbies did.

all of you with the little one, I hope you don't get the combination of newly grasped strength + teething-related love for biting that my littlest called the "Old Buffet", in which she'd yell those words and chase us in order to bite us hard, like we were the buffet. some of us still have scars.

When J is tired, he wants me to pick him up. When I do so, he bites my collarbone. This is not actually cute.

baby teeth second only to baby nails in list of World's Sharpest Things

omg those fucking nails, and they are so hard to trim